Training Wheels
by At A Venture
Summary: Eric/Sookie. One-shot. Sookie goes for a bike ride, but somebody follows her home...


**Training Wheels**

The sun dipped quietly beneath the canopy of cypress trees that lined the cemetery near the old farmhouse. I sat swinging on the front porch, watching red and purple ribbons stretch across the evening sky. I love spring, when it's still cool and not too humid, when the leaves on the trees are bright green or still just buds, when the cacophony of animal noises is tinged with katydid songs, and fireflies flit between blades of fresh grass. I put down my book and closed my eyes, just listening. Amelia was away for the weekend, so I'd cooked a quiet meal at home after work. The smell of grilled catfish with lemon and capers was still fragrant in the air around the house, and yet, I needed something to refresh my body, to fill me with that pleasantly full feeling.

I got out of the swing, letting it tap me slightly on the backs of my thighs, and I walked around to the shed. After fiddling with the door for a minute, I hauled it open and dug into the cobwebs for my bicycle. I'd inherited the bike, a comfort bike, from a waitress at Merlotte's that was moving away. She'd given it to me as a gift because I'd worked so many shifts for her. I honestly don't remember her name. Jill, maybe? I only rode the bicycle in the spring and summer, when the weather was gorgeous and warm, the night sky lit up with stars or the day completely unencumbered by clouds. She was a good bicycle, and I had named her Izzy. Yep, I named my bicycle. She was a good bike, reliable and trustworthy, always taking me where I needed to go with minimal problems. I mean, sometimes her chain would kink up, or the gears would clunk, or I'd have to get the brakes checked, but all in all, she was an excellent machine.

I tied my hair back into a ponytail, checked to see that I had a few dollars in my pocket, and pushed Izzy up with me to the end of the driveway. Bicycles and gravel don't mix that well in my experience. Luckily, Izzy was a champion on old asphalt roads. She could even hold her own on dirt if it wasn't too muddy. I threw my leg over the saddle, hopped aboard, and started peddling. I listened to the clicks in the gears as I shifted her into second so I wouldn't have to peddle too hard. I let the stirrup clips scrape on the pavement so I wouldn't get my feet stuck in them. I rode hard, letting my ponytail wag behind me, flying out into the evening. The air was cool and I was glad I'd thrown on a creamy white cardigan before I'd gone to sit out on the porch.

I could hear bullfrogs croaking in the darkness, their calls so similar to the sounds of cows that more than once I looked around for a stray bull trying to cross the road. A few bats skirted in front of my field of vision, chasing mosquitoes through the air. The yellow eyes of a fox (or a really big cat) peeked at me from the bushes around the bayou. My eyes darted away from the road and I looked up into the sky. Even though it stayed light much longer now that daylight savings time had kicked in, the night came on rapidly as soon as the sun fell out of the sky. I watched the stars twinkle overhead and tried to remember the names of the constellations. I found Orion the hunter, the Big Dipper, and Cassiopeia. I saw the Seven Sisters, Castor and Pollux, and the North Star. I dragged my eyes reluctantly back to the road. My calves were feeling the exercise, and I knew I'd hit a surge of endorphins. I felt free and clear and happy on Izzy, and I almost forgot why I'd gone out in the first place.

I turned down from the main road and pulled into a parking lot. Most of the shop lights were out, but the gelato-and-frozen-custard shop was still open. Business was booming too. Half of Bon Temps had showed up for frozen custard and fruit-flavored slush. I parked Izzy beside the shop's wall and got into line behind one of the ladies from Gran's Descendants club. We talked a little about what kind of gelato we wanted, and how I was doing, and wasn't that nice girl from the insurance company living with me now? I looked over her gray head at the menu, deciding on chocolate custard with blueberry slush. It may sound gross to you, but it's a really good combination.

When my turn came, I put three dollars on the window sill of the shop, ordered a large gelato with chocolate custard and blueberry ice, and grabbed a spoon while the clerk rang me up. I took two bites of chocolate before I stuck the cup in the water-bottle holder on Izzy. I wanted to sit on the porch and eat my treat, not wolf it down and then go home again. I was going to enjoy my gelato in the comfort of my own front yard.

I rode back along the old main road, filled with pot holes and lined with bullfrogs. Second gear was clanking and rickety, so I messed with the thumb-height gear shifts on the handlebars. I adjusted over and over again, trying to get the right setting so that the bike would pop into third gear. Instead, the whole thing suddenly stopped.

"Ack!" I squeaked, mostly surprised. Izzy's chain had come loose before, falling off the spokes of the gears and settling onto the pedals. I hit the brakes, carefully and steadily, taking my feet off the pedals as soon as I was slow enough to stop. I leaned over so that I could get down, and I bent over to mess with the chain, to put it back on the gears. I don't mind getting dirty with bike chain grease. Heck, it's sort of the fun of bike riding. But when I looked down to assess the state of it; I got a bit of a shock.

"Uh," I blinked. "Okay, where did it go?" I turned around in a circle, looking for the bike chain which had, apparently, fallen off the bike completely. Well, that's new. I'd ridden at least another ten or fifteen feet after I'd lost my forward motion, so I picked up my ice cream (so it wouldn't spill) and went back down the road, leaving Izzy in the grass. I found the chain lying on the street. It had broken.

"Oh, that's great." I sighed, picking up the chain. I held it in my hands and looked at where it had broken. There was no rust on it, but Izzy hadn't been used since the previous season. Miss Faithful and Reliable and just become Miss I-Can't-Take-It-Anymore. I looped the chain over my hand and walked back to the rest of my vehicle. I righted her again, put my ice cream back in the water bottle holder, and began to walk.

"Oh Izzy, honey. I should have checked you out before we left. I was just so excited to go riding, to get outside, to get some exercise, and hey, to get gelato," I patted the seat. "I'm sorry, honey. We'll get you fixed tomorrow. I promise."

I watched bats fly across the road again, ducking through the spray of a particularly misdirected sprinkler head. I swatted at my arm when a mosquito came by to suck on my flesh. I peeked across the street at the bayou to watch the magnolia bushes rustle. Less concerned with traffic now that I was on foot with Izzy at my side, I glanced back up into the sky. It was a new moon tonight, and thus the sky was filled with millions of stars and not much glare. I could make out all the constellations and much more besides. There were millions of sparkling diamonds up there in the heavens, stretching through time and space to peek down at Earth. In grade school, I took an astronomy course, and my teacher had told us that some of those stars we were seeing weren't even there anymore. They were like ghosts in the sky, still radiating light. It took so long to reach us that it's source had burned out in the time it took us just to see its shimmer. I always thought that was really cool.

The night seemed to close in on me a little, as though a shroud had been pushed over my shoulders by force. I looked around, trying to make out where the sensation was coming from. It felt like there were eyes on me, but there was no one around that I could see. I stretched out the fingers of my mind, listening for thoughts or sounds, even pictures. There was nothing. I couldn't sense anything at all. I looked around again, scanning the area carefully. Bullfrogs croaked. Magnolias and cypress trees rustled. Otherwise, there was just me, Sookie Stackhouse, barmaid and telepath, alone on a country road in Bon Temps.

I was nearly home, and darnit, I could go faster if I got on Izzy. Sure, her chain was missing and she couldn't give me any kind of forward propulsion, but I was going down hill now. As long as I could brake, I could get home and go inside. I stopped and threw my leg over the bar. I jumped onto the saddle with a little too much enthusiasm and pushed off the ground with my foot. I went rolling with the speed of the downward slope. I started picking up speed as I came closer to the farmhouse. I'd left a light on in my bedroom, another on the porch, and I could see them now, glowing in the dark. My speed picked up again and I started to freak out. Okay Sookie, time to brake now. Definitely going too fast. I squeezed the brakes, carefully. They squealed with resistance and then stopped working. I yanked back the brake handles. No response. Oh shit. Oh shit oh shit oh shit.

I was out of control. I was on a bike, going downhill at break-neck speed, and now I couldn't stop. I tried to think back to what Jason had taught me about bike riding. I was eight years old and Jason had fixed up his old bike for me. He'd always told me that if I lost the brakes going downhill, I should turn crossways and lean uphill so that I'd fall on my side instead of going head over handlebars when I hit some sort of barrier. Either way, he'd told me, I was going to fall off. But if I did the crossways method, at least I wouldn't break my head open like a honey dew melon falling out of the grocery cart.

Izzy went jolting down the gravel driveway. I skidded and swerved in the rocks but I was still careening downhill. I turned the front wheel and leaned into the slope. The tires lost their grip on the road and I toppled over. I hit the ground with a great and painful stabbing sensation that jolted down my thigh and up my ribcage. I grunted loudly, slamming my arm and leg into the gravel. Izzy fell down overtop of me, crunching against my knee, my ankle. I lay on the ground for a few minutes, staring up at the sky. Everything was stinging.

"Sookie!" Eric called out, his feet hitting the gravel from above. He knelt at my side and touched my shoulder. His great big blue eyes were consumed with worry. His blond hair fell over his face in little streams of white gold.

"You were following me!" I squeaked at him. "I got all scared and it was you!"

"Is that why you got on the bicycle? It doesn't have a chain, Sookie." Mr. Obvious to the rescue.

"I thought I was being stalked. I didn't care that it didn't have a chain!"

"Let me help you up." He grabbed Izzy and pushed her upward.

"I'm fine," I groaned. I pushed my hand into the ground, pushing aside gravel, and got slowly and stubbornly to my feet. My pedal pushers had taken some of the rocks, but my knee and calf was scraped up and I had scrapes from my wrist to my elbow. Blood was leaking into the sleeve of my cardigan. Yuck. Eric carried Izzy as though she were made of bamboo or air. I took my gelato, still miraculously intact, from the water bottle holder.

"I spotted you walking your bicycle about a half mile back." Eric said, looking back at me while I hobbled. "I can carry you and the bicycle, Sookie."

"I'm fine," I repeated grumpily.

"You know you are meant to ride the bicycle, not walk with it." Eric chuckled.

"Haha. You saw it already. The chain's gone."

"What happened to it?"

"It broke off about a mile back."

"And you rode it anyway, to escape a stalker, in Bon Temps, at 8 o'clock in the evening?"

"Yes." I muttered.

"Perhaps we ought to get you cleaned up," Eric frowned. We'd come to the house at last. I walked uneasily up the stairs and opened the screen door into the house. Eric came up the stairs behind me and scooped me up off my feet.

"Put me down. I can walk just fine!" I protested.

"Lover, as much as I love your stubbornness and your contempt for personal assistance, I believe this is one of those times where you are meant to eat your ice cream and mope while I clean rocks and dirt out of your flesh and put antiseptic ointment on your cuts."

"It's gelato," I pouted. "And I lost my spoon."

"Strip off your pants and sweater. I'll find you a utensil." Eric kissed my forehead gently, set me down on the edge of my bed, and went back to the kitchen for a spoon. He returned with it, as well as the first aid kit I kept beside the fridge.

"You're not going to lick me?" I asked curiously. Eric had knelt in front of me. He'd stuck a washcloth under the tap and was pressing it against my leg. I sorta looked like hamburger meat. His mouth was turned down with disgust.

"Lover, I prefer my blood without bits of gravel and dirt in it."

"Gran always told me, 'God made dirt and dirt don't hurt.'"

"It may not hurt, but it most certainly does not taste good." He shook his head and flicked his chin in the direction of my gelato. "How would you like it if I put gravel bits in that?"

"Point taken." I nodded.

"You really get yourself into the most awful…scrapes, Sookie."

"Oh har de har har," I stuck out my tongue.

This is what I love about spring. The warm pleasant nights, the skies full of stars, and the awkward bicycle accidents that end in your beautiful six foot five inch Viking vampire lover cleaning your knee with Bactine.

"Ow! That stings!" I squeaked.

"You baby," Eric smirked.

"Am not!"

Okay, maybe not the Bactine part so much.


End file.
